Sookie Lynn

by Malcolm Glass

​

Sookie and I fell in love in bumper cars.

For many years, until I hit fifth grade

and Sookie, I was the spring carnival star,

knocking grade school kids in Dade

 

County into a bamalam sideways spin,

smack into another driver.  But a third

grade red-head named Sookie Lynn,

a skinny, pint-sized, cocky bird

 

of a girl, a newbie, made me look so

bad, slamming me every which way,

pinning me hard in the corner. “Go,

Sookie!” My friends would pay

 

for that. Shoved down the side wall

by her pedal-to-the-metal zeal,

I cringed at her laughter and all

their jeers. My steering wheel

 

yanked at my hands, but I hung on

somehow, bone-jarred to the end.

I sat there, head down, pride gone.

“Ricky, will you be my boyfriend?”

 

Leaning on the side of my car, she smiled,

teeth missing, freckles sprinkled all

over her face, pigtails loose and wild.

“Kiss me, silly,” she said. Screams, catcalls

 

fell all over us. And the more they hissed

and booed, the longer we held that kiss.